


Soulstuff And Starstuff

by Wanderlust_Interrupted



Category: Underfell - Fandom, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Underfell (Undertale), Before The Core, Canon-Typical Violence, Confusion, Emotional Constipation, F/F, F/M, Family Feels, Just Overall Confusion, M/M, Mages, Magic, Medical Conditions, Multi, Nudity, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Self-Insert, Soul Magic, Souls, Swearing, Transformation, headcanons, non-sexual nudity, sorta?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25495081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanderlust_Interrupted/pseuds/Wanderlust_Interrupted
Summary: Green SOULs are weak.That's the overall understanding in the Underground.So when Grillby finds a confused and frightened young fire elemental with a medical condition near a dead human body, he really should have just either dusted the kid or left. Looking back, it would have been a lot less trouble in the end. Kindness has no place in a world of Kill or Be Killed. But of course, his sister holds him back.A grip that he really should have shaken off by now. She's been dead for decades, after all.
Relationships: Alphys/Undyne (Undertale), Dogamy/Dogaressa (Undertale), Grillby & Original Character(s), Muffet & Original Character(s), Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Papyrus & Sans & Original Character(s), Papyrus & Sans (Undertale), W. D. Gaster & Grillby, W. D. Gaster & Original Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	Soulstuff And Starstuff

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! 
> 
> This is basically an exploration of character for me, both of myself and the characters I'll be writing about, an exercise of sorts. I'm not sure how far I'll explore it, or where the trail ends, but I have a good feeling about this. I hope that you enjoy what I've written.

Falling  _ sucks. _

Acrophobia sucks as well, but you just have to work around it.

Screaming doesn’t help. You just lose more of your air, air that you can’t regain when it’s all stripped past you while in gravity’s unrelenting grip. It’s sort of like drowning, I suppose. You struggle to breathe as your lungs fill with the exact opposite of what is so vital to your continued lifespan upon this plane of existence. In the water, it’s, well, water. But in midair? While you’re plummeting towards the ground, your back searing hot from the friction between gaseous atoms struggling to move past your solid body, flailing your limbs in vain without anything to grab or hang on to? It’s the lack of anything. Just pure nothingness. Your lungs shrivel up within your ribcage as you try to keep them from collapsing in on themselves. You gasp, unable to scream, or cry out, or even whisper. All because you  _ can’t breathe _ .

To make matters worse, the sheer terror from your worst, most  _ irrational _ of phobias, which  _ doesn’t feel all that irrational at that moment _ , constricts an invisible hand around your heart and  _ squeezes _ . Because in the end, the fear of heights is a thing because we don’t have wings to fly with. If we fall, we fall, and we’ll hit the ground at some point because  _ there’s always something that’s going to stop us _ . Something that doesn’t care whether or not the fall was from too far up, if the momentum decides to riot against your very flesh and shatter every bone in your body, if it happens to be far too hard so that all that’s left will be a gruesome sight that will only cause someone trauma when they find what’s left of you, if you have the ability to arrest the velocity of your fall before it destroys you from the inside. Your limbs seize in fear and your mind struggles to cling to its precious sanity-shielding denial. You  _ can’t _ be falling, there  _ has _ to be a way to make it out alive, there has to be  _ something _ you can do. But there isn’t.  _ That’s _ what it means to have acrophobia while falling.

That was my situation.

You probably see the problem now.

Of course, as I said before, there’s always going to be something to break your fall. There was a flash of green- _rich_ _emerald leaves and clover dotting the ground, soft dewy grasses against the soles of my feet as we run through the sun-speckled forest, innocent to the shadowy dangers lurking in the corners of our eyes and certain in our safety, unquestioning in our faith in those who swore to protect us as we grow-_ and then I hit the ground. What comes up always comes back down. I was the apple from Isaac Newton’s tree, proving the existence of gravity, only the tree was the earth from hundreds of feet above, and the apple was a delicate, weak meatbag of a teenager without the protections of the bouncy apple from having my white fruity flesh smash against the sharp rocks beneath that towering imitation of Yggdrasil. 

For a moment, I felt nothing. Was it the shock, maybe? I’m still not sure. Unfortunately, that couldn’t last forever.

Pain. That’s… well, I suppose it’s not that mysterious. Nerve endings telling your brain that you’re hurt somewhere and to stop moving so that you don’t aggravate whatever’s wrong and let your body handle the healing process. Not always possible, but that’s life for you. Sometimes even your body becomes a workaholic. And the unfortunate thing about being a workaholic? Well, eventually you get run down, exhausted, testy, and when that happens, you make mistakes. Sleep is supposed to let your brain, the main control, turn a bit of itself off and rest for a moment. Kick your feet up and relax, let the night shift take over so that the day shift could have a few hours of rest. When you don’t do that… well, there’s been sleep deprivation studies done on rats, and when kept awake for too long, they have a tendency to… die. Basically your brain can’t handle the strain and just stops working. Like a computer that gets too hot, I guess. 

Still, all that input, all those blaring error messages screaming at me to not move and get help, it all hit me at once with about as much subtlety, or gentleness for that matter, as a sledgehammer. One of those oversized ones you can sometimes find in video games. Screaming was still not an option, my body was desperate to pump some vital oxygen molecules back into my system before my body gave in. The human body’s cooling system. My throat was burning, and I couldn’t exactly move. Was that what it felt like to be hit by a truck? If so, no wonder people dreaded such a thing, though then being able to immediately get up afterwards was a rather unrealistic expectation, especially with snapped legs. Yeah, I had far too many bones shattered. Full-body cast, here I come.

Though I’m getting off track. To put it simply, all of this is just a really roundabout way to say one thing.

My body went kaput.

Zero, zilch, nada, my heart decided to climb aboard the nope train, my brain went on strike, I flatlined, my neurons quit. You know what I mean. 

Didn’t die though. Not exactly.

Mage SOULs are quite the strange, lovely little munchkinry thingamabobs. 

+++++

Green is a surprisingly uncommon main SOUL trait, on the decline since a long, long time ago. Kindness has always been a trait that the other traits would gravitate towards and feel an urge to protect. This makes sense once you think about it because Green SOULs have always found themselves centred on the way they can help others. While they can have extraordinarily rich inner worlds, when someone else is in need, they will often drop what they’re doing and try to help in any way possible. This makes them both a very powerful and equally vulnerable type of SOUL, not as vulnerable as Ethereal but easy to take advantage of if one isn’t cautious. They are at their brightest and most powerful when there is someone who needs them. They often end up forming tightly knit bonds without truly being aware of it. It is when they are permitted to help others and bring others up with them that they thrive the most. Some main archetypes where a Green SOUL would be strongest are the Caregiver, the Provider, the Parent, the Martyr when the individual in question is a willing example, the Renegade surprisingly enough, and of course, most famously the Healer. 

It holds a close resemblance at times with the traits Justice, Trust, Generosity, Love, Integrity, Perseverance and Determination, and it’s not uncommon for these characteristics to be minor traits of such a SOUL. 

Views on Green SOULs vary between humans and monsters. Ever since the death of the two royal children, Kindness has been seen as the weakest of the seven main SOUL traits, which has led it to become practically nonexistent. This has become detrimental to their society beyond the ‘Kill or Be Killed’ philosophy, something difficult for this trait to survive at all either as the main characteristic or a minor one, due to such a trait being vital to healing magic. Without a hint of Kindness, one cannot heal another. This has caused the natural HoPe that monster SOULs need to diminish on average, as well as caused healing magics as a whole to become lost to their species save for certain old records from the surface. If there are any left, then they have hidden been away and are guarded jealously for their primary ability. Instead, LoVe has become an overall self-destructive alternative. Meanwhile, Kindness itself is both lauded as a virtue to strive towards by humans while at the same time being seen as weak or foolish. It depends on who you ask. However, overall Kindness is seen as something good, and so Green SOULs, while not common, aren’t in danger of disappearing on the Surface.

However, like all SOUL traits, it has its darker attributes. The most commonly known is Sacrifice, otherwise called Martyrdom, or Altruism when in smaller quantities. Unfortunately, due to the innate drive to help, protect and provide for others, it isn’t uncommon for those who aren’t knowledgeable of their SOUL traits to neglect their own health and needs, which, in the most extreme of cases, can lead to personal deterioration and even death, if not breeding the other, more dangerous negative trait they can exhibit. Everything about a Green SOUL is attached to how they connect to others, no matter their personal outward disposition. An extrovert can be just as Kind as any introvert, and vice versa. The problem is that sometimes, when their Kindness and natural caregiver tendencies are taken advantage of, and they end up neglected, their SOUL, in a rush to try to preserve their own life, exudes out a rather insidious trait. Hatred. That’s what it’s been named at its purest form. In smaller quantities, it can also be named Resentment or Bitterness. 

This negative trait is one of the most deadly of the lot, an ugly parasite that is often foreign and frightening to the afflicted Green SOUL. Depending on the person and how well they can deal with it, or how they deal with it, they can either shove it into a mental black box and attempt to forget that it exists, slowly distilling a purer form of the exact same thing they so fear, they can direct it onto themselves due to feeling as if it is something that is wrong with them and which is fully their fault, which can morph it into Self-Hatred and lower self-esteem to an unhealthy extent, they can search for the cause and then shove their full energy on dissipating the trait and dealing with the root problem, perhaps the healthiest of ways, or they can unleash it after bottling it up for too long, causing the sort of damage that is similar to unleashing an emotion-targeting nuclear bomb inside their homes and safe havens. It’s a rather unknown trait in Green SOULs precisely because when it does appear, it causes the afflicted to act in ways that are seen as very unlike themselves by others. The most soft-spoken, gentle of people can grow cold and sharp of tongue, and the brightest, most affectionate individual can explode in tears and unleash a plague of callous, painful attacks on those who approach.

After all, as the quiet empathetic listeners in the night, the supportive friends who you approach when you need a shoulder to cry on, the loving fluff balls of care and sweetness who so easily can worm their way into people’s hearts and prove countless times that they are worthy of letting down your walls, they know exactly how best to hurt you if the time comes.

That’s why it’s the healers who have the greatest potential to cause the most harm.

**Author's Note:**

> Please, comments are more than welcome! They're like water to my muse and may influence the direction this story may take. If you have any advice or criticisms that could help my writing become better, then I'd love to hear your opinions and they are more than welcome, though I don't mind calm debates and discussions in the comments either. I also enjoy kudos, as they act as a motivator for me. 
> 
> Thank you, and I hope that you all have a pleasant day!


End file.
